I've used Brave since March, and I'm really not impressed. For a browser that tries to be different, it's incredible how little consideration has been given to things that annoy users and that could probably be trivial to remove.

To be more specific, my issues with Brave are:

- Still uses the Chrome Web Store as main store

- Does not have an easy way to load packaged extensions from 3rd party sources

- Even after adding them as unpacked, you still get the same annoying popup every time you open the browser.

- I received notices that "My account was waiting for a deposit" the entire time, even though I never allocated any money to anyone

- Tipping amounts are fixed

I always saw Brave as "not chrome, and not as much of a change as Firefox", but their approach seem lazy, features halfassed at best and the sneaky anti-features that Chrome has been adding to push users to lock into Google stuff (see all my remarks about extensions) not addressed at all.

I'm using Firefox as main browser now, and I haven't been missing brave once.

It's perfect for my use case: Chrome but with all the google bits removed and built-in ad-blocking. Can't say any of those things you listed have bothered me. I don't use BAT.

Edit: Why do so many new accounts (green text) post to any thread about Brave?

ungoogled-chromium A lightweight approach to removing Google web service dependency

ungoogled-chromium is Google Chromium, sans dependency on Google web services. It also features some tweaks to enhance privacy, control, and transparency (almost all of which require manual activation or enabling).

ungoogled-chromium retains the default Chromium experience as closely as possible. Unlike other Chromium forks that have their own visions of a web browser, ungoogled-chromium is essentially a drop-in replacement for Chromium.